Before I actually get to this post I want to comment that I may be leaving livejournal behind. All the cool kids have blogspot and frankly, I'm a follower when it comes to blogging. This is the area in my life where I succumb to peer pressure and try to be cool. I don't really think anyone looks at my livejournal page anymore anyways so it probably doesn't matter.

I just drifted through an hour or so of looking through pictures from college. I was inspired to take this trip down memory lane by a discussion about 10 year reunions in my office today. I commented that I really was looking forward to my ten year reunion which led to my co-worker scoffing and saying, "What, all four of you?" No, silly girl, all EIGHT of us. Heck yes, DCA class of 2001.

But seriously, I was looking at the pictures I have of my friends in my cubicle and I am one lucky sucker. I have friends I have known my entire life, or very close to it. Of the eight people I graduated with, I am at least somewhat in touch with all of them via facebook and actually talk with most of them on a regular basis. Sometimes, I really miss the cozy families I had in Blacksburg. My senior class. My sophomore year homegroup led by Matt Rogers and Jeanette. The Bungalow of love (oh yes, those were golden days. Even when the living room flooded). The people I became family with from those to places have stuck with me and I really adore them.

So here's to you people! Come visit NY! You can see Massies and Blums in one go! Happy birthday Ross! You can always make me laugh. Sara #2, I can't wait to see you. We will eat crazy food and laugh really hard at things no one else in the world thinks is funny. And Shana, let's start stalking the internet for random flight deals because it's getting to be tooo long. Though I love the constant stream of random emails throughout my work day. People probably do love a sassy monkey.

Yes, it snowed again. Yesterday it was sunny and warm and today I woke up to snow on the ground. I came out in my little ballet flats and found myself sliding across the driveway. Gracefully? HA. Of course not. I almost fell on my butt. I had to go back inside to change my shoes since I felt certain that if I attempted t0 walk across the parking lot at work in my flats that I would certainly fall and either a) break a bone, b) slide in front of a car, or c) severely embarrass myself in front of someone important by biting the ground in front of them. Such is the way of things.

I write this to chronicle my laughable challenge of maintaining a professional demeanor at work. Maybe I'm not suited for corporate life. Not that I am incapable of acting in a professional manner. However, once I have been working with the same people for some time ( I have been at my job for 6 months as of today) I struggle to not treat them in what I would consider a friendly manner. Is this a problem? Possibly. I will leave this to your judgment after reading about the following occurrences.

Preface: a large portion of my job includes working with the author's of technical documents. I help them following guidelines, etc. When I'm working on their document we see a lot of each other.

1. The Coat Incident

One of my "regulars" came in on a particularly frigid day wearing a big puffy coat a la George's gortex coat on Seinfeld. Having recently seen that episode of Seinfeld I completely cracked up and my initial response was to get up and start punching (not hard or anything) my co-worker while asking "Can you even feel this?" I was having a jolly time until I saw the look of- confusion? or was he just really startled?- cross his face. Suddenly it occurred to me that perhaps punching a co-worker, whether it was all in good fun or not, might not be the most appropriate workplace behavior. Ooops. Of course, I apologized to which he said it was okay, he was just surprised. Of course, I felt very embarrassed and made sure I was very professional with him for at least the next 3 or 4 times he came to our office. And I have not punched him again, even when he wears the puffy coat.

2. The Donut Incident

This was actually very humiliating to me. But I was so hungry.

Anyways. I had woken up late on this particular day so I was feeling rushed when I arrived at work. I had agreed to take a 9:30 meeting for one of my co-workers and found that my inbox was completely stuffed. It took every second from my arrival to 9:15 to get things somewhat under control, leaving me no time for breakfast. My stomach grumbled its way through the hour and a half long meeting. I was so hungry when I got back to my desk, but I still had tons of things that could not wait to get done that I just had to dive back into work. There I was, feverishly tapping out emails and various other things when I heard the plop of a cardboard box and saw Rob out of the corner of my eye- Rob! Rob had said yesterday that he would bring us donuts!! This was the extent of my thought process before I said, loudly (very loudly- almost yelled- what was I thinking?) "HOLY CRAP! IS THAT FOOD??" Needless to say, I startled every person in earshot. You would have thought their reaction to my outburst would have silenced me but instead I started babbling to Rob things along the lines of, "Oh Rob, I'm so hungry! You have no idea! BFF, that's what we are now, I am not joking." (Yes, I said "BFF" to a scientist. Sigh.) Eventually my sense of propriety managed to catch up with my rapidly blathering mouth and get it to shut up.

Today it reached a balmy FORTY SIX degrees outside! I had started to forget what that type of warmth felt like.... Anyway. Joe and I took part in a wonderful Syracuse tradition- go to the car wash and get the incredibly thick layer of salt and chemicals off your car before the temperature dips below freezing again! Yay! Seriously, it was like a party at the car wash. There was a line for the automatic carwash (I am not exaggerating) at least 10 cars long. Then there were us peons using the manual carwash. This was my first experience with the manual carwash. What a thrill! The feisty sprayer nozzle and the weird foaming brush! Then again, maybe I was just intoxicated by being able to breathe in without feeling my nose hairs freeze...

Earlier I went with Joe to a woman's house where she has a small mill for making her own yarn. Surrounding her mill are the animals she gets the wool from- goats, sheep, alpacas. It's a fun place. The barn is full of an unknown number of cats. The goats are very sociable. And Janet, the owner, is very keen on teaching people about her business. As a result, I got to pull bunches of wool apart and feed them through a carding machine for probably about an hour today. Aside from that we did some wool conditioning, dying and spinning. Awesome.

Today I found myself thinking "There's no chance in hell I'll-" And then's when my brain abruptly stopped (I think this is from a condition called "losing you train of thought," something I have developed more and more) to say, "Eh?" What is this saying we all use? I mean, you want to make a point you exclaim brusquely "There is no chance IN HELL I'm doing that!" and you sit back satisfied you've made your point. But logically, what does that mean? What do we know about chances in hell? Wouldn't it make more sense if I said, "There is no chance IN NEW YORK I will be doing that!" Or, say, it's something like, voting republican, you might say, "There's not a chance in California I would even consider that!" You get my point. I understand the saying, "there's not a snowflake's chance in hell" because the general population considers hell to be a hot place. (Dante disagrees, but that's a subject only English majors would think was funny so I'll just stop now.)But without the snowflake, or something similar, this saying falls apart.

Today was one of those special mornings. I awoke to find about 2 inches of snow, maybe three on the ground with the tiny, fast falling snow that is a Syracuse specialty mounting at every second. Literally, while cleaning my car by the time I got to the back, the front had already accumulated a significant amount of snow on it.

Ah yes. The tiny and apparently undetectable snow. It baffles the weathermen. The forecast of 3 to 6 inches has changed to 6 to 10 inches over the next 24 hours. No harm guys, we'll never even notice those extra 3 inches. Honestly, I feel sorry for the weathermen here. This weather is obviously beyond anyones ability to predict.

Here two things I have seen Syracuse people do differently than Virginians when it snows:
(you'll notice I didn't add Californians. Since all my time was spent in Santa Cruz and Los Angeles I know for a fact that if it snowed there even once like it does here the whole city would shut down. People would cower in their homes. It hailed once in Santa Cruz and they CLOSED THE ROAD I took to work. It hailed once in LA and people just stopped on the freeway. Just stopped.)

1. In VA when we would wake up to a snowy morning we would immediately switch to slow-motion while we waited fervently for announcements that businesses and schools were closing down.
This is basically never an option in NY. I saw school buses while I was driving in this morning through the disgusting smush (it's not slush, it's not wet enough, but it WANTS to be slush) covering the roads. And, other than the bizarre instance of being made to leave work that one time, that's not really an option either. You don't even pause. In fact, if you're like me and don't have a garage, you start moving faster because you know that if you can get your car clean quickly and leave now the snow will be a quarter of an inch shorter.

2. In VA we would spend several seconds outside our cars knocking snow off our boots before we got in. I have never seen someone do that here. They just hop right in. Embrace the snow.

I end this with the one thing I really dislike about coming to work in the snow: Not being able to see the lines in the parking lot. We all just try to line up in a somewhat tidy order but you can tell everyone feels weird and hesitant. If the snow suddenly melted, that would be an awesome sight.

Yesterday I wrote a letter to a friend I had in high school. He's in jail now, sitting on death row. I struggled from the time of his arrest in fall 2007 until now to decide to write the letter. What could I say? What is there to say? Why would he even want to hear from me, someone he hadn't seen in years.

A few things kept nagging at me though. The first being the thought that at one point, this guy wouldn't hurt a fly. Literally. He was especially protective of ants. I always thought of him as the warmest, most open-hearted person I had ever met. What had happened to crush his spirit? To push him to do these terrible things? What had changed his heart?

Following this was the thought, "no pit is so deep that He is not deeper still." Betsy ten Boom said this to her sister before dying in a concentration camp. She told her sister she had to go preach the message of God's grace, that people would believe her because of the atrocities she had seen and lived through. Grace beyond comprehension. Grace that reaches into the deepest pit. That forgives the most terrible crimes. That extends to any and everyone. A wonderful and terrible thought that is hard to swallow. (CS Lewis said forgiveness is a wonderful idea until you have to forgive someone.) It lay on my mind- shouldn't I remind my friend of this grace extended to him? How many times had we talked about it before?

Finally, I was pushed over the edge by CS Lewis' essay "The Weight of Glory." I was reading it yesterday and a bit at the end gave me that final nudge. Lewis comments that, like it or not, we Christians believe that everyone is heading for one of two final destinations- a welcome of "come in good and faithful servant" or "I never knew you." (Lewis discusses all of this much more than I will, I'm just pulling out the chunk that made me put my pen to paper) I hate being reminded of this point. It's not something I like to dwell on. Even though, like Lewis, I believe that God's mercy and grace are far beyond comprehension, and I believe that I serve a God of infinite love whose hands are always reaching toward us, it is still a painful thought. Especially when faced with the reality of a friend with a death sentence on his head. No one like to be reminded of mortality.

Back to the point. Lewis commented that every person we meet is far from ordinary eternal beings and that every day we help one another on our journey toward one of those final destinations. And the thought occurred to me- could I help nudge my friend toward a different road. My nudge would come too late to change the events that led him to this place (could I have done anything to change that? I don't think so but who knows?) but maybe it could do something good. Anything good. If nothing else, he could know someone in the world beyond his mother and brother cares about his life.

Why do I think this is something to share with cyberspace? I have no idea. Maybe it's not. Is it too personal, too one-sided? Is it too much? If it is, sorry. Ever since I wrote that letter yesterday my mind's been swirling with thoughts of the past and I've blurted them out here.

Honestly, how did our friend Ben get passed over for that role? Is he not one of the coolest of the founding fathers? Oh sure, I know, he was accused of a wee bit of philandering, but seriously, which founding father wasn't? Let's focus instead on the cool aspects of Ben Franklin and why he completely deserves to be on the pimpin' $100 bill.

-He was a ladies man. In spite of his more recognizable older, fatter and balder self that we all know so well, Ben was quite the smooth talker it seems.

- He discovered electricity. THANK YOU BEN! Maybe the wizarding world of Harry Potter has no need for electricity but I find it incredibly handy. And all because Ben was just crazy enough to go running around in a lightening storm.

-Bifocals. As someone who will probably need bifocals at some point in her life (was Mom right? Did reading way past bedtime by the light of my night light ruin my eyes?) I am very glad Mr. Franklin didn't just give up on the visually impaired and settle with two pairs of glasses for all as the only option. Thanks Ben, keeping track of one pair is hard enough.

- He was adept with the printing press. So cool. I would love to play with one of those things.

My last point is the one that really made me love Ben. Well, aside from that adorable movie made about him and the mouse who helped him invent things. It's that Ben Franklin is really the reason we won the Revolutionary War. Everyone always lauds George Washington and sings songs about him. We think about the terrible winter in Valley Forge and Washington. We think of Boston and Paul Revere. We think of the Declaration and Thomas Jefferson. We think of patriotism and Patrick Henry. But when you think of Franklin, people think of keys and kites. However, without good old Ben sweet talking France into helping us, we would have been completely overwhelmed by the British army/navy. Think about that next time you have a $100 bill in your hand. And then send it immediately to me.

(I wrote this but didn't post it here, I posted it only on facebook. Here it is.)

Should I just start ranting or should I tell the story and insert the ranting at key moments? I think I will opt for the latter.

So the weather men tell us- look out Central New York (CNY)! There's a LOT of snow coming your way. I mean A LOT! Do not leave your homes unless you have to. Unfortunate that Mother Nature couldn't arrange for this to happen tomorrow when most of us don't have to work...

So anyways, the school people are like- "Close the schools! Close 'em all! Protect the children!" Meanwhile, the rest of us shrug and head off to work. And I accept this. Sure, we're supposed to get dumped on all day and into the night so I am guaranteed terrible driving conditions home but (Thank God- seriously, I am thanking Him right now) I only live 1.6 miles from work and I can make it home. I'm sure I can. So I sit at my desk and watch the massive amounts of snow falling from the sky accumulate on the ground without a care in the world because I can't leave so whatever.

But then, the unthinkable happens- we are told to leave work immediately and go home.

Here is where I begin ranting.

YOU CRAZY PEOPLE! Why on earth, ON EARTH would you force people to leave AFTER there is already a good 4-5 inches on the ground, snow so thick I could barely see the building across the parking lot and our parking lots haven't even been plowed??? And this is the part that really killed me- people started fleeing like rabbits from a flood. I mean, I saw this one woman go scurrying out into the parking lot and shimmy her way through the snow slipping and sliding all over the place. It was bizarre.

So I think to myself- no way am I driving even my little 1.6 miles in zero visibility, I'm waiting for this to lighten up. So I did. And it did a little. But considerably before I would have chosen to leave (which would have been closer to now when the snow has almost stopped) I was FORCED to leave work. "We're evacuating the site! Everyone go home!"

AGAIN! CRAZY! I had to make my way home and then get poor Joe to help me dig our way into the driveway because NO PLOWS ARE OUT YET! (Okay, there are a couple but not on any side roads).

But this is the worst and most insane part of my day.

As I am making my way home through this wretched weather, I am doing okay. Slow and steady, me and my little Saturn are driving along, hoping we miss red lights when suddenly AN OBVIOUSLY INSANE man decides to HOP OFF THE SIDEWALK IN THE PATH OF MY CAR!!!!!!!! HOLY CRAP DUDE! DO YOU WANT TO DIE??? Needless to say I started tapping on my brakes like a crazy person but I'm not stopping and have to turn to avoid this possibly suicidal IDIOT. Unfortunately, when one turns in this type of weather one continues turning for an unknown amount of time. I ended up only turning about 90 degrees, which isn't bad, and since no one was around I didn't have much trouble getting going again. What I did have trouble with was RESTARTING MY FREAKING HEART since I think it might have stopped when the stupid moron stepped out into the road. What on God's green earth could possess someone to think that walking in the road is a reasonable idea??? IT'S NOT! NOT NOT NOT NOT!

Dear Syracuse Natives,

Please stop asking me how I like the weather or, more accurately, how I am "handling the weather." Do I look upset? Do I seem traumatized? Have you been reading my facebook status updates? If so, you're a stalker. If not, what about me suggests that I am horrified by the weather? Yes, it's cold. Yes, it's snowy. Yes, I admit, I have never seen weather like this before. Yes, I know, I moved here from sunny L.A. But seriously, it's January. We've been buried in snow for two months now. If you haven't found me curled in the fetal position in the snow weeping or rocking in the corner muttering "snow snow snow" over and over again, you aren't likely to. I'm fine. Really.